time before the forced the Spanish to give up on the Rif, which was part of the reason for the military coup d'état later in 1923. On September 13, 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, 2nd Marqués de Estella, seized power in a military coup d'état. General Primo de Rivera was in the words of the American journalist James Perry a "moderate dictator" who was convinced that the divisions between the africanists vs. the had pushed Spain to the brink of civil war, and who had seized power to find a way out of the crisis. General Primo de Rivera soon concluded that the war was unwinnable, and considered pulling back his troops to the coast with the aim of at least temporarily abandoning the Rif. In late July 1924, Primo de Rivera visited a Spanish Foreign Legion post at Ben Tieb in the Rif, and was served a banquet of eggs in different forms. In Spanish culture, eggs are a symbol of the testicles, and the dishes were intended to send a clear message. Primo de Rivera responded calmly that the army would be required to abandon only the minimum of territory and that junior officers should not dictate the measures necessary to resolve the Moroccan problem. However he subsequently modified the plans for withdrawal, pulling the Spanish forces back from Chaouen and the Wad Lau region to a prepared fortified boundary named the "Primo Line". French intervention In May 1924, the French Army had established a line of out-posts north of the Oureghla River in disputed tribal territory. On 12 April 1925, an estimated 8,000 Rifians attacked this line and in two weeks over 40 of 66 French posts had been stormed or abandoned. French casualties exceeded 1,000 killed, 3,700 wounded and 1,000 missing – representing losses of over 20 percent of their forces deployed in the Rif. The French accordingly intervened on the side of Spain, appointing Marshal Pétain as commander-in-chief of an expeditionary force of up to 160,000 well-trained and -equipped troops from Metropolitan, Algerian, Senegalese and Foreign Legion units, as well as Moroccan regulars (tirailleurs) and auxiliaries (goumiers). With total Spanish forces at this point numbering about 90,000 the Rifian forces were now seriously outnumbered by their Franco-Spanish opponents. Final French deaths from battle and disease, in what had now become a major war, were to total 8,628. On September 17, 1925, a squadron of